The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep is the triumphant return of one of the most iconic RPG series of all-time. Delve into a tactically rich combat system that rewards creativity, solve puzzles to gain treasure and advantages, and discover a beautifully crafted world.

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If player charges characters on elevated platforms or cliffs, there is a chance that the combat will start off-grid or the player will not be aligned properly to the combat. We are working to address this in the next full patch.

Thanks for helping us to continue improving the game for everyone. Please keep letting us know if you are still having any issues with The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep.

November 20

Today, we are pleased to bring you the Second Sight Update, which brings a number of requested features (most notably an option for “save anywhere and anytime”) and a host of fixes. It also brings our previously mentioned Legacy Mode features, which we’re thrilled to finally deliver, especially to our long-time fans of the series! For details on this patch, please check out the notes below.

Work on the game continues. Certain major milestones, such as a revamped inventory system and controller support, are still on their way. That is in addition to continued improvements and optimization based on your feedback.

In addition to the above, we also continue to work on the Mac and Linux versions, as well as a few other nice things that we can´t talk about yet. Please let us know what you think of the update, and we look forward to talking with you again soon.

The team at inXile

What is Legacy Mode?

With the Second Sight update, we’ve added a whole suite of options to customize your play experience that we call Legacy Mode. You can play the game like a modern first person adventure or wind back the clock, turn off auto-mapping, activate grid based movement, and step your way through our dungeons and overworlds like you’re back in the 80’s.

Legacy Mode Features:

Grid Move (BETA): You can now play using grid-based movement! This feature has been a long time coming and we worked hard to get that classic game feel while still working with all our more modern elements and overworld design. You’ll have the option to grid move with full free look enabled at all times or play in a more classic mode in which your camera is rotated for you as you walk forward along the grid. There's still polish on this feature left to do, but rather than holding back for longer we wanted those of you who are passionate about this feature to try it out and let us know what you think, and what you feel the most important improvements to the system would be. Let us know what you think on the forums!Note: For those turning this feature on in an pre-patch 4 save game, you’ll notice many NPC’s aren’t looking directly at you in the world while moving on the grid. We adjusted NPC’s to better align with the movement grid, but to make that change propagate in existing games it’d require wiping out the NPC’s save data That would reset things such as their inventory, which we wanted to avoid at all costs.

Save Anywhere: This has been our most requested feature. You can now save the game (almost) anywhere in the game. Save through the pause menu, or use F5 and F9 to quick-save and quick-load. While save anywhere is active, you cannot consume luck-stones for bonus experience. A small price to pay.Some areas have been blocked off from saving for technical reasons, and if that’s the case you’ll see a prompt appear letting you know that’s the case. Usually just moving somewhere else in the room or level will resolve that issue.

Auto-Resurrect: For an extra bit of difficulty, you can deactivate auto-resurrect. This will cause characters who fall in combat to only resurrect upon finding a luck stone. Food will also not revive characters while this is active.

Perma-Death: This mode is only for the bold. If your entire party is incapacitated, your save file is permanently deleted. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. This option cannot be changed once it’s been set and can only be set on new games.

Auto-Mapping: You can deactivate auto-mapping entirely, resulting in all your maps appearing black with no icons. Break out your graph paper.

Mini-Map: You can toggle how prominent your mini-map is on screen. You can set it to always show, only show while your adventurer’s HUD is up, or never show at all.

Show Waypoints: Toggle waypoints on or off, if you hate being told where to go.

Show Enemies On Map: Toggle weather or not enemies appear on your map and mini-map, for an extra challenge.

The A-Team is back: You can spend 8 mercenary tokens at Mercy the mercenary vendor to hire 6 adventurers who are fully geared for war and ready to rock.Brian the Fist, the Fichti PaladinEl Cid, the Dwarven FighterMarkus, the Elven BardSir Grady, the Trow RogueMerlin, the Einarr ConjurorOmar, the Elven Magician

Adventurer Re-Spec’ing: By spending a mercenary token at the Review Board, you can refund an adventurer's skill points.

The caster of All Together is now able to cancel the order, taking all his/her allies out of the stance that he/she granted them.

Increased the damage per spell point dealt by the Veteran passive to +3, up from +2.

The Veteran skill now grants max spell points.

Guardians, when absorbing re-directed physical damage, now benefit from 1/3rd of their total armor.

Increased the damage per spell point dealt by Spell Blade to +2, up from +1.

Several skills in the Cleric tree now grant bonus spell points, to help Rogues and Fighters spec into Cleric.

Mangar’s Mallet’s Spell Point cost has been increased to 8, up from 6. Its damage has been reduced to 1.5x your intelligence, down from 2.5x your intelligence. Trust me, its still an amazing value.

Oscons Halt Foe is now battle ready. Its Spell points have been reduced to 5, down from 8. Its cooldown is increased to 4, up from 1. Basically, its cheaper to pull off, but you can’t do it as often.

All Together’s cooldown has been decreased to 2, down from 3.

If a warrior is wielding a buckler and grants Deflect to his allies via All Together, those allies will benefit from the Stubborn Defense passive.

The damage ratio on Dueling Stance is increased to 0.8x your strength, up from 0.5x

Dueling Stance’s opportunity cost has been reduced to 1, down from 2.

Wayland’s Watch is now Battle Ready, while its cooldown has been increased to 2, up from 1.

Deflect is now Battle Ready.

Cultists Wizards have had their intelligence doubled, making their arcane barrages deal more damage, and their focus harder to break.

The loot weight on Black-jacks and Razor Strops has been doubled, making them appear more often in chests.

Blood Pact’s change to trigger has been increased to 50%, up from 30%.

Last Breath has its cooldown increased to 3, up from 2.

The damage of Passing Slash has been increased.

Elixirs of Focus now grant a flat intelligence increase instead of a % based one. This will benefit low intelligence characters more, and high intelligence characters less.

Lesser elixirs grant 4/8 intelligence.

Greater elixirs grant 6/12 intelligence.

Arcane Barrage’s damage now scales on a diminishing curve, instead of linearly. This means it’ll do slightly more damage early game, but characters with higher than 20 intelligence will see a gradual falloff in damage-to-intelligence ratio.

Soul Leech can now only trigger 3 times per turn, instead of infinitely.

The Inner Peace passive no longer increases the channel duration of meditate by +1 turns.

Conjurors mark now deals damage equal to 33% your strength, instead of 40%. Additionally, its AOE damage has been halved and it can only be triggered by non-spell attacks. This was done because of how dominant spell spamming was as a strategy, and spells triggering the mark added too much bonus damage without any real coordination with your team.

The 3 buff from vorpal plating are now mutually exclusive. Applying one of those buffs will remove any existing buffs that might be on that adventurer.

Horrifying vorpal plating has its duration reduced to 1 turn, down from 2.

The Rogue’s infiltrator passive no longer hides the entire party. It now hides the rogue and any adventurer’s standing directly to his right or left. This stealth now only lasts 1 turn, down from 3. This was done because infiltrator passive was simply negating too much damage, and there were plenty of ways for the party to effectively deal damage in that time (like razors strop or meditate) that wouldn’t reveal them. Hopefully rogues position at the start of combat, and who you choose to hide, will be more strategic, while still allowing the enemy to get hits in on some characters.

The acidic boon line now works as such:

Acrid now has a 50% chance to apply one stack of rend.

Caustic now has a 100% chance to apply one stack of rend.

Acidic now has a 100% chance to apply one stack of rend. If the target has no armor, it’ll apply the Melting status effect instead, causing them to take bonus damage with each attack.

The Electrifying boon line now works as such:

Jolting now generates a single stack of status each time a non-damaging ability is performed, up to a maximum of 3 stacks.

Shocking now generates 2 stacks of static each time a non-damaging ability is performed, up to a maximum of 4 stacks.

Electrifying now generates 2 stacks of static each time a non-damaging ability is performed, up to a maximum of 6 stacks. Each time an enemy is stunned in this way, there’s a 15% chance to stun the entire enemy team.

All traps now deal true damage, meaning that armored characters can now take meaningful damage from traps.

Fixed an issue where early access and backer reward items, like the Red Boots, weren’t showing interaction FX when they should.

Fixed an issue in which Sundering Smash wasn’t displaying the correct amount of armor it should rend. The damage rent was higher than what was being displayed. The tooltip was fixed to match the higher value.

Torches and the Blazing Star now correctly show their abilities while viewing them in the inventory.

The rusty berserkers horned helmet has been reduced to its intended 1x1 size, down from 2x2

Drunkenly Empowered rhyme of the duotime no longer affects itself

Drinking, while already plastered, will not continue to double your strength with each drink.

Clerics can now target themselves with Change Fate.

The Lunge passive on Elven Boots now only triggers when the owner uses their move ability, and not when moved by others. Additionally, it can only be triggered once per turn.

Poison damage was increased substantially and is now based on the level of the character it’s applied to, instead of being based on the applicators strength.

On Fire status effect damage is now based on the level of the character it’s applied to, instead of the applicators strength. The damage shouldn’t be vastly different for most characters, but you’ll see low strength characters able to deal much more damage with fire, while very high strength characters might see a slight drop in the damage dealt by that status effect.

In light of this change, Crux’s passive has been adjusted to deal only a token, comical amount of damage if he applies it to your own team.

Alguin now has 34 intelligence, down from 86. This means Alguin is much more likely to have his focus broken during Alguin’s Gambit.

Razor Strop had its base bonus damage reduced by 25%, and its base duration reduced to 2 turns, down from 3.

The Razor Strop item had its passive, Finely Honed Blade, fixed so it now correctly increases the duration of Razor Strop by 2 turns.

Other Fixes:

More improvements to performance and stability

Fixed an issue where viewing the Red Boots tooltip in non-english languages caused a crash.

Fixed the Swiftness, Clear Mind, Fleet Footed, and To Me! Passives to only work while your language was set to English.

The Master Thief passive now works correctly. Burgle to your heart's content. For the record, the chance rob a merchant is set to 40%.

Fixed a bug in which the Rabble-Rouser and Commander passives weren’t properly saving their bonus opportunity if the party member was moved out of the party and back in, or if they gained the skill directly inside character creation.

The master 1-handed weapon skills in the bard’s skill tree will now properly save.

Baedish Mercenaries now correctly benefit from their bonus skill points granted to them by their cultural passive.

There’s now a pop-up window warning you before you pick up the Hungering Blade that this action initiates the end game, and that you may want to complete and side quests before doing so.

Lumbering Strike now reaches enemies 3 spaces away, as advertised in the tooltip.

Your Guild Roster can now hold any number of benched adventurer’s while they aren’t in your party.

Fixed a bug that could result in Fichti party members sometimes unnecessary saving nearby allies from non-lethal damage.

Mercenaries who learn dancing lights during character creation will no longer have that ability forced onto their mastered abilities after level loads.

Fixed several text overlap issues, several of them pertaining to localized text.

The Long Bow’s passive, Blot out the Sun, now correctly reduces the cost of Rain of Arrows from 2 opportunity down to 1.

Fixed several issues involving characters not having a body while not wearing armor. They now correctly show their potato sack cloths when not wearing armor.

Taunt no longer causes enemies to trigger move twice, which resulted in some instances of bleed triggering twice from a single taunt.

Improvements have been made to NPC beards.

The descriptions of the Throw Bomb and To Me! Abilities have been updated to better reflect their functionality.

Cleaned Hutar, Captain Beckwith, and Fatherite Paladin AI so they’re better able to seek you out in combat.

Improvements to character teeth

The Scorcherer no longer appears after his quest has been completed.

Several gameplay options are now correctly quarantined to your save file. Options, such as difficulty, will now be local to your save file. If you have multiple active saves, they’ll each maintain their own difficulty settings.

A new HUD raise/lower sound has been added that’s subtler.

Harmonic Shielding now correctly adds and subtracts armor. There is still a known issue where the UI doesn’t always update correctly, but we confirmed the armor is being applied and so you’ll still benefit from it.

Additional artistic points of interest have been added to Skara Brae Underground.

Fixed several instances of combats starting in or below collision.

Fixed an issue that resulted in dragon’s bile puddles persisting after combat, and having blocking collision that made it hard to move around. Both issues have been fixed.

The Razor and the Source Dagger now correctly synergize with the Spellblade passive.

Fixed a visual bug in which drunkenly empowered Sanctuary score would heal you just before you died, making it looks like a bug, when in fact the damage you took was great enough to kill you through the heal. It’ll no longer show the healing if you’d die as a result anyways.

The Feast and Famine abilities have been fixed to do the correct amount of damage, as advertised. Their tooltips have been updated to display what damage type they deal.

All characters can now wield the Hungering Blade. All practitioner parties can now defeat the mad god.

Fixed an issue where characters would appear incapacitated but have positive health.

You can now talk to Kian regardless of what quest step you’re on.

A Model Quality setting has been added to the options menu

Fixed an issue where the static charge status effect icon would persist after combat.

The bonus focus buff from Elixirs of Focus now correctly last for 2 turns, instead of only one.

Fixed a lock-pick panel in the Glade of Mathan so that you could interact with it.

Fixed several issues relating to status effects not stacking atop each other properly, including Drunken Wayland’s Watch, Drunken Falkentyne’s Fury, and Rend.

You can now view tooltips in the options menu.

Fixed a crash related to winning combat while a Siambra Dhu had an explosive arrow attached to one of your adventurer’s.

Fixed an issue where existing the game and re-opening the game at a certain point in alguins tower would create an invisible barrier, blocking progression.

The Logician Dinner Party quest no longer updates how many books you have simply by moving the books around in your inventory.

Song of Compulsory Cavorting now breaks enemy focus, as intended. When this happens you’ll see the enemy isn’t dancing, but is still stunned as intended. We opted to push this fix without the dancing animation fix rather than leave the bug in.

Several optimization, LOD, and culling fixes in the Forest of inshriach.

Fixed an issue where you could charge enemies right when being spotted, or walking into them, and you’d start combat with the enemies behind you.

Fixed an issue in which Sanctuary Score’s status effect icon wouldn’t be removed if it were removed from enemy damage.

Known major issues

Important Hotfix Note! We've pushed a hotfix today (11/21/2018) to address certain push-blocks not being traversable in free movement mode. We wanted to get this fix out as soon as possible so you would be able to complete the main quest line. All main-quest dependent push-blocks have been fixed with this hotfix, but sadly 2 optional push-block puzzles remain un-traversable in free move mode. If you encounter push-blocks you cannot walk over in free move mode, you can switch to grid move mode and traverse over them just fine. We’ll work to get these remaining issues fixed soon.

If you attempt to save and load during the end-game credits and re-battle the final boss fight, the game may crash. To avoid this bug please avoid saving during the credits and load your last save game from the main menu instead. You can skip the credits by pressing escape and going to the main menu.

Attacking a concerned citizen before Jarnels Eyes effects have faded results in bugged materials on the enemy model

There’s a small edge case in which you’re able to transform a goblin into a cultist during the illusory Dalgliesh fight if you’re able to hit both Illusory Dalgliesh and a goblin at the same time before Illusory Dalgliesh has transformed. The bug is aesthetic only, and shouldn’t block completion of the fight.

In the main menu, if you go into the load game menu, hit escape to close that menu, then press escape again, the buttons on the main-menu will hide. You’ll need to just restart the game to proceed at that point.

Purchasing the “Wand of Peace” book from Feargal will not start the Wand of Peace quest as intended. Instead, the quest automatically starts when you enter the Lodge of the Siambra Dhu dungeon.

While on “The Hungering Blade” quest, no waypoints appear to guide you to Mother Nain while in the Baedish Lowlands.

Using the new Save Anywhere feature you’re able to avoid combat with Mangar in Kylearan’s Tower, save/load inside his chamber, and place your game in a bugged state that might require loading a backup save to resolve.

If you right click on an item in your inventory, move your mouse away, right click again, select destroy or split, and then leave the destroy or split confirmation window, then the escape button will not close the inventory and you’ll have to use either I or the close button at the top-right.

Repeatedly pressing Esc during the fade in transition to any NPC conversation, may cause soft lock for players

Special Editions

About This Game

Hidden in the shadows, an evil has waited patiently. Until now. Who will face the darkness if not you? A heroic adventure featuring 40+ hours of gameplay, 350 speaking parts, a Legacy Mode for returning fans, and over 100 pieces of incredible music!

Customize How You Play

Define the way you play, using sliders on numerous options such as saving (including “save anywhere”), the mini-map, waypoint markers and many more. Whether you seek a hardcore challenge, a lighter experience, or something in-between, the choice is yours.

Create the Hero You Want To Be

Play as Bard, Fighter, Practitioner, and Rogue, each featuring 60-70 skills and collectively unlocking 21 unique classes. Build an array of characters to make every playthrough a unique experience.

Craft your Party, Your Way

Start your party with a single character, recruiting or creating new heroes to bolster your ranks. Build a party that suits your play style!